Chapter 16 #2
"You were right," Emmy said. "About all of it.
Not just Ryan—about the pattern. I needed other people's love lives to work because mine never did.
I needed to be the person who saw things, who knew things, who fixed things.
And the whole time I was doing it, I was missing everything that actually mattered.
" She looked down at her mug. "I missed it with you and Ryan.
I missed it with Tyce and Sabine. I missed it with—" She stopped. Swallowed. "I missed a lot."
The apartment was quiet. Through the thin walls, someone was playing holiday music—the jazzy instrumental kind that sounded like a department store at closing time.
"I'm not here to give you advice," Emmy said. "I know that sounds obvious, but for me it's actually kind of revolutionary. I just wanted you to know that I see what I did. And I'm sorry."
Harper was quiet for a long moment. Then she set her mug down, got up, crossed to the couch, and sat next to Emmy.
"You know what's different about that?" Harper said. "You didn't follow it with a plan. No 'and here's what I'm going to do about it.' No redirect. You just said it."
Emmy's eyes burned. She blinked hard. "I'm learning."
"Yeah." Harper's voice went thick. "You are." And then her face crumpled—not dramatically, but a quiet, helpless thing, her chin wobbling and her eyes going bright all at once.
"I missed you," Harper said. "You idiot.
I texted you five words after the leak and I've felt awful about it every day since.
I wanted to come over. I wanted to break in with my bobby pin again and make you eat carbs.
But you hurt my feelings and I was being stubborn about it and—" She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand. "God, I'm such a mess."
Emmy was crying too. Something about Harper's wobbling chin and the smell of cinnamon just broke something open.
"I'm sorry," Emmy said again. It came out waterlogged. "I'm sorry I treated you like a project. I'm sorry I never came here. I'm sorry I—"
"Stop apologizing and hug me, you disaster."
Emmy hugged her. Harper hugged back—fierce and tight, the kind of hug that reorganizes your ribs. They sat there on Harper's secondhand couch, crying into each other's shoulders, and it wasn't pretty and it wasn't eloquent and Emmy wouldn't have traded it for anything.
When they pulled apart, Harper was laughing and wiping mascara off her cheeks. "Look what you did. I just put this face on."
"You look great."
"I look like a raccoon." Harper sniffed. "Are those Boston cream donuts?"
"Obviously."
"Then you're forgiven." Harper reached for the box, pulled one out, and took an enormous bite. "Okay," she said through a mouthful. "Tell me everything. Start with quitting and end with why you look like you haven't slept."
"Ryan's good?" Emmy asked first. Because she needed to ask it right this time—not as an expert assessing a match, but as a friend who wanted to know.
Harper's whole face softened. "He's so good, Em. He cooked me dinner last week. Chicken parmesan. He overcooked the pasta and it was the best meal I've ever had."
Emmy laughed. It came out watery. "Sometimes the spreadsheet is wrong."
"Sometimes the spreadsheet is spectacularly, magnificently wrong." Harper squeezed her hand. "Okay. Now start from the beginning. What happened?"
So Emmy told her. Cecelia's ultimatum. Beckanne's quiet loyalty. Sabine and Tyce—Harper's eyes went wide at that one, and she said "I knew it" with such conviction that Emmy almost laughed. The contract she needed to review, the reporter she was thinking about calling. All of it.
When she finished, Harper pulled her legs up under the blanket. “Tell me about Grant."
"There's nothing to—"
"Emmy." Harper gave her a look. "You showed up at my door with donuts and an apology and you can't say his name without your voice doing a thing. Tell me about Grant."
Emmy opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"I think I'm in love with him," she said. Very quietly. Like saying it softer might make it hurt less.
Harper didn't gasp. Didn't squeal. Just nodded, like she'd been waiting.
"Yeah," Harper said. "No kidding."
"How long have you known?"
"Longer than you." Harper bumped her shoulder. "Way, way longer than you."
Emmy pressed her palms against her eyes. "It doesn't matter. He doesn't feel the same. He's really happy with Bailey."
Harper squeezed her knee. "I'm sorry." Then, “wanna eat donuts and binge a K-drama?"
Emmy laughed. It was wet and awful and exactly right. "Yeah. Yeah, I do."
That night, Emmy sat at her kitchen table with her employment contract and a yellow highlighter.
The document was twelve pages. She'd signed it in September without reading past the compensation section, which was exactly the overconfident shortcut that defined every mistake she'd made at Elite Connections.
She read it now the way her mother had taught her to read primary sources—slowly, skeptically, underlining anything that mattered.
Page four: confidentiality. Employee agrees to maintain strict confidentiality regarding all client information, proprietary matching methodology, and internal business processes for the duration of employment and in perpetuity thereafter.
Client information. Proprietary methodology. Internal processes.
Emmy highlighted the operative nouns and kept reading.
Page seven: non-compete. For a period of eighteen (18) months following termination of employment, Employee shall not engage in matchmaking, romantic consulting, or relationship services within the Greater Boston metropolitan area.
Matchmaking. Romantic consulting. Relationship services.
Nothing about speaking to a journalist. Nothing about discussing her own experience. Nothing preventing her from talking about why she quit, as long as she didn't name clients or reveal how the sausage was made.
She texted Callie in 3B:
Emmy
If an NDA covers "client information and proprietary methodology" but not employee experience or general business practices—can I talk to a reporter about working conditions without naming anyone?
Callie
Generally yes. NDAs that try to silence employees about non-proprietary working conditions face enforceability challenges. Specific language matters though. Send me the clause.
Emmy photographed the relevant page and sent it.
Callie
This is narrow and specific. You're protected as long as you stay away from client names and matching processes. Who wrote this? The restrictive covenant is almost elegant.
Emmy smiled despite herself. Only Callie would find beauty in a non-compete clause.
She set the contract down. Picked up her phone. Pulled up the Boston After Dark article that had detonated her life—Petra's byline at the top, neat and professional, with a contact email underneath.
Emmy opened a new message. Typed three sentences. Hit send before she could talk herself out of it.
Petra called back within the hour.
The skeleton situation had escalated.
Emmy saw it the moment she turned onto her parents' street—or rather, she saw them. Plural. Because Sour Bill Henderson, in an act of provocation so audacious it bordered on art, had acquired a second skeleton.
Adam had his Eve.
The original twelve-footer stood in its usual post, wearing what appeared to be a Grant Knight jersey, topped with a Santa hat. Someone, possibly Bill, possibly Bill's equally unhinged wife Deirdre, had sewn red felt hearts onto the jersey.
The new skeleton was shorter. Maybe ten feet. Female, if the dark wig and veil were any indication. She was positioned next to the original, her bony hand resting on his bony arm, and someone had placed a bouquet of plastic roses in her other fist.
Emmy's father was standing on the porch, arms crossed, staring at the display with the focused horror of a man watching a nature documentary about parasites.
"He's gotten worse," he said when Emmy reached the steps.
"I can see that."
"The veil, Emmy. There's a veil. He's married them." Her father's voice cracked with outrage. "I've been filing complaints for three years. Seventeen letters to the HOA. Seventeen. The man is untouchable."
Inside, the house smelled like roasting chicken and pine.
Her mother had put a wreath on the kitchen door—the same jolly Saint Nick hook she'd used every year since Emmy was eight, though the wreath itself was fresh, real pine that dropped needles onto the floor.
Her father had stuck a small label to it: Knock at your own risk.
Dinner was quiet. West and Brynn weren't coming—they had their own thing tonight, West's text had said, with the vague evasiveness of a man who was probably assembling a crib and didn't want his father researching the structural integrity of every brand on the market.
Her dad talked about Grant's stats from the Jets game.
His completion percentage. His fourth-quarter efficiency rating.
The way his footwork had improved since October.
"He's playing hurt," her dad said, cutting his chicken with surgical precision. "You can see it in his left shoulder. He's compensating."
"John." Her mother's voice was mild. "He's a professional athlete."
"Professional athletes are just bodies that haven't broken yet. It's a statistical inevitability."
Emmy ate. She didn't add anything. Her father's obsessive tracking of Grant's health used to irritate her.
Now it just made her chest ache—this man who'd been worrying about Grant since he was seven years old and never stopped, not for one day, not even when that boy grew up and became someone the whole country watched on Sundays.
After dinner, her dad retreated to the living room to monitor the skeleton through the front window and compose what he described as "another strongly worded but legally nonactionable email to the HOA board."
Emmy helped her mother clear the table.